How Many Greek NT Manuscripts Are There Really?

That’s a question I get asked a lot. It’s a question many Christian apologists and skeptics of Christianity ask. And, it’s the question that Katie Leggett and Greg Paulson answered very carefully and very helpfully last month at the INTF blog. I’m tempted not to give you their answer here so that you have to read their entire post. 

But first, why is answering this so hard? Isn’t it just a matter of tallying up the highest manuscript number assigned in each of the four categories of papyri, majuscule, minuscule, and lectionary in the official list of manuscripts (known as the K-Liste)? It’s not. For at least three reasons. 

The first is the difficult question of what counts as a manuscript. Do amulets count? Should they count? What the Liste has included over the years has changed. 

Second, manuscripts can go missing, change hands without the list-keepers knowledge, or they can be lost or destroyed. If they were once on the list but are now unaccounted for, do they count? 

Third, what do we do when the same physical artifact contains portions of the New Testament in different hands from different centuries? Are we counting the resulting artifact or the varying copying events (for lack of a better term) that led to the one artifact? 

The point is not that these questions can’t be answered but that they must be answered before we can answer the original question. (By the way, these issues are all helpfully addressed in Jacob Peterson’s chapter in Myths and Mistakes.)

With all that said, what number do Leggett and Paulson arrive at? Drum roll, please... 5,700.

This is the number I will now be giving to people when they ask and it’s the number I would encourage you to use. Whenever you do, let me encourage you give the necessary caveats about the wide range in date, quality, and size of these 5,700 manuscripts. They are not all created equal! Furthermore, the number is not stable given new discoveries, the movement of manuscripts, and the ongoing identification of duplicates and the like. Still, it is very helpful to have a count from the same source that makes the official list we all use. Kudos to Leggett and Paulson!

Update (1/11/24): see the follow up posts on this here and here.